Work / Spartan
Digital transformation at Spartan Race
Spartan is the world’s largest obstacle course race (OCR) company and second largest race organizer in the world with 10MM annual racers and 243 events globally. Before my work with them their digital presence was functional but not enabling growth. I led the design team and personally shipped final specs to achieve a complete overhaul of all digital touchpoints. A critical part of this new digital product strategy was imagining and executing a net new membership and account experience for racers to connect with their community, view past performances, and drive race retention.
2020-2022
Role: Director Experience Design & Membership
Leadership • Ecommerce • Web app • Business ownership • Product management
Creating digital product that transforms lives
Impact
7% increase in conversion in main event purchase funnel
Managed $1MM budget of membership program
Grew membership from 0 to 2MM monthly active racers
0-1 creation of ecommerce and account digital product grossing $100MM annual revenue
1.9MM MAU of new account web app experience
Spartan was the leader of one of the fastest growing mass-participation sports on earth. People use the intense crucible of OCR to transform their lives and overcome personal challenges. It was an honor and duty to create experiences for such a devout and fanatical community.
The organization had built a world-class operations and promotion machine but in the digital realm they had not yet understood how to translate their brand. Fanatical online communities in Facebook and Reddit owned the conversation and there were no ways to interact with the Spartan brand online.
One of the major challenges for the brand is to transform bucket-listers in to repeat racers. The majority of racers come once for the experience but don’t find hooks to bring them back to the event or online. Those that made that leap become instant devotees and have 10x lifetime value to the brand and themselves.
Challenges
2% conversion rate for events
90+ day conversion timeline
Aging home-grown tech stack
Strategy
A connected event experience that guides racers discover, progress, and connect through a transformation with community.
Results
10% conversion rate for events
Increase in multi-race pass sales
Modern headless ecommerce site with Shopify and Contentful
Teams were an organic phenomenon at the live events and we new it was an effective mechanism for new racers to get hooked on racing. Creating a digitally-enabled way for groups of people to search, plan, race, and compare or compete was a clear way to leverage this flywheel.
Physical gamification of medals and race products needed to be augmented and enabled digitally to energize and organize racers.
Enmesh a membership offering that unlocks benefits online and at events to elevate your experience and deepen brand engagement.